Working & Thinking on the Farm

False believer & Wayfarers all

[farmandbarn]

Scary to leave

Wednesday, 19 September 2018

Light work today. Two hours at the barn and two hours working in the house. The break is needed. Did ten to twelve hour days all last week, which is a lot for me when it's mostly all physical. It's also my last days on the farm. It's clear to me now that this has been a transitional phase in my life, never meant to be a stopping point. Vitally important but temporary. I'll be going north. To see, to see if, man, ok, to see if we can breathe life into our relationship.

Shoveled some of the last of my dirt today. Anxious to leave at this point-- just want to get on with my life. At least that's how it feels. Though I'll miss the solitude and night walks. I'll miss the small town up the road too. Terry the barber was the reason, the catalyst, for my homecoming attendance. During my haircut, he pushed for me to go. Hometown pride and all. We ran into each other at the game and lamented the home team's performance over nachos.

The downside, however, of a sparsely populated area is that I've watched too many horror movies. I tried to go out to the barn at night, like I've wanted to, but I just couldn't do it. The barn, I mean, it's literally in the middle of a cornfield. Come on. Either a guy in a jumpsuit and hockey mask is going to turn up right behind me or there'll be an alien abduction. It was a terrible mistake to watch Fire in the Sky as a kid.

I don't particularly like going to the basement here. Of course, who does? But I needed to go down there early today. Doubly creepy since I'm all alone tonight. As I descended, there were noises from the far end. I muttered aloud, "Yep. Sounds about right. Obviously there're noises."

It didn't slow me down. I even decided to take some pictures, realizing that I had taken none of the basement.

Above, the first room looking into the second. A third room can be found straight ahead and to the right.

Third room. Not creepy at all. Really hope it was the owner who moved the chair into the room. If not, well, I guess it would have to be the faceless old lady who secretly lives in your home.

[farmandbarn]

Dreaming

Monday, 17 September 2018

The foundation being rebuilt. Each stone has been marked so that it will be the same as it once was. It’s kind of a three-dimensional puzzle with a few pieces missing and others broken and weathered so they don’t fit like they should.

One of the workers, at the end of the day, allowed me to ride on the side of his truck. Just like in Back to the Future but minus the hoverboard. Once I hopped on, I realized I was fulfilling a lifelong dream. A small dream but a dream nonetheless.

Some of my other dreams: -Enter or exit a room to the USA chant. -Be physically threatened by the teachers union. -Befriend a wild wolf in the wild. -Really piss off a large group of people and then relish in it.  -Someone says, "You are what you eat." I reply with, "No, who we are is much more than that." -Someone says something about there being an issue with the roads and I reply: Roads? Where we're going we don't need roads.

Oh, and I'd like my last words to be: The pirate treasure-- it's buried...

I suppose Abraham Lincoln's final words were of laughter, which is pretty good if you think about it. (And if you count laughter as words.)

Now if you look very closely you'll see a happy dog sitting inside this massive collection of metal.

I think the dog is living out his dreams. Being on a farm and all. He also eats very well.

[farmandbarn]

Homecoming

Friday, 14 September 2018

Finally finishing up at the barn. My work of preparing it for the contractors is completed and they'll be there on Monday to rebuild the foundation. I'll still be out there tomorrow and next week but my real work is done.

I've discovered that there's always more to do on a farm.

Though as the summer comes to a close so does my time here. It won't be forgotten and this period has helped me considerably. It may have saved my relationship.

The above is from the local high school's homecoming game, which I attended. It was boring, sure, but I knew that going in. I just wanted the experience, for the memories to return. Kids running about wildly-- falling down, yelling in excitement, and ducking under the bleachers. The high schoolers crammed together in the student section, shouting and moving in unison. Old people there to support their children or simply to root for the old home team.

Made sure to stop by the concession stand to buy an overpriced hamburger and nachos. The food of memory.

Sadly, the home team wasn't good enough. The Cougars got smashed by the Indians. A margin of twenty-something.

I'll end up missing aspects of my life here but I find myself anxious to leave. There are advantages and disadvantages to everything but I see now that I prefer the city. I miss getting cell reception or having a place to eat past 8 pm.

[farmandbarn]

Howard & John, John & Howard

Sunday, 9 September 2018

About halfway through the above. Surprising that I didn't read it in my junior high days when I had read much of John Bellairs' work. It's pleasant to have old things that are new to you.

I really love The Beatles and this will be a short digression. Merely a paragraph, surely. There are certain Beatles albums-- The Magical Mystery Tour, for instance-- that I've never listened to. For me, there are brand new Beatles recordings out there. Someday I'll listen to them as if they were just made and released that very week. My fear is dying unexpectedly. Then I'll never get to hear that stuff. But then, I'll be dead so... Either there's nothing so I won't even be aware or there is an afterlife. And if that afterlife doesn't have The Beatles? Then I want my money back.

I reread a few of Bellairs' stories this past Spring. They didn't scare me in the way they did when I was twelve or thirteen but I still thoroughly enjoyed them. Though there were a few moments when I found myself glancing behind me to make sure I was safe.

What surprised me was how many little references there were to HP Lovecraft. Bellairs was clearly a fan and, I would say, one of Lovecraft's successors. A pleasing discovery as it creates a certain (small) wholeness within my life: That I can draw a line from what I loved in junior high to when I found Lovecraft my freshman year of college to the present day. Points of interest in my life can be connected, which, for whatever reason, is pleasing. In a way, it strikes me as meaningful.

Lewis and Rose Rita, the main characters, encounter a soup-like fog surrounding their small hometown of New Zebedee, Michigan. They try riding their bikes through it to get to the next town but find themselves, against all reason and common sense and physics, to be right back where they started. They went in a straight line but somehow the line became a circle.

That’s common enough but, nonetheless, it creates a feeling for which I have no name. It’s predicated upon fear but fosters a connectivity between the characters. It almost feels cozy and warm. There’s camaraderie too– a kind of sharing. But also fear. It can be found in Jaws when the terror truly begins to settle over the small town. Or in the original Resident Evil as you explore the old mansion on a dark and stormy night, occasionally running into an ally, savoring the brief safety. I can still hear the music from one of the few safe rooms where one might save or exchange items from the trunk. Another: It. The kids have only each other to count on for safety. As if they were on a small raft in the middle of a dangerous sea.

I find myself always searching for that feeling. Even in real life. I’ve experienced it on a dreadful winter night in a coffeehouse. The outside is inhospitable, even dangerous, but we few have braved the elements and icy roads to make it to the building's warm safety. The snow continues to fall, it can be seen through any of the windows, but we are together, drinking our coffee and slowly warming.

[farmandbarn]

The short rain

Saturday, 8 September 2018

A long few days. I'm happy to be done for the moment and for the rest I'll have tomorrow. It's odd-- it's Saturday night but that doesn't mean what it once did to me.

It's dark out now. There'll be no parties or bars or even coffeehouses. Just quiet and my computer.

Haven't posted anything in more than a few days and I feel kind of bad about that. I've been traveling though.

A long drive back to my hometown, which was good. I wasn't sure about that, about how it would go, I mean. Parents, family, you know, it can be muddy.

I returned to Iowa in the rain.

[farmandbarn]

The flies, man, the flies

Tuesday, 28 August 2018

Rainy and cloudy yet muggy. Sorted through hundreds of pears today, among other weird tasks. What a bizarre sentence that is. I doubt I've ever put those particular words together in such an order before.

Here's a sentence I once heard. I've never caught it again: I don't like bacon. From a friend/co-worker a few years back.

So the pears. Two categories to start: Green or yellow. Each then yields two other categories: Blemished or not. Four piles in the end. Pretty dull, I know. But the flies, man, the flies. Like nothing I've ever experienced. So many. And the buzzing. Relentless. Kept thinking that one of the Four Horsemen was moments away. Pestilence, I guess.

A picture of some people who once lived where I now live some time ago. The place looks about the same today. I sat on the porch there on the right-- with the flies.

The photo doesn't have anything to do with this post. I noticed it and decided to put it in.

It's a happy picture. Or at least, I think. I suppose people don't typically photograph sadness. Well, not their own.

Maybe there's a parallel universe where everything is the same except people are brutally honest about themselves and their lives on facebook. No showing off or image-crafting. I wonder how that would change things-- the ripples, I mean. Would it be a better world? A world with less sickness?

I don't know. But I know, here in this universe, I'm utterly tired of what has happened to social media. When I was much younger, I somehow came across the Hacker's Manifesto. Looking back, sure, it's a bit juvenile but those words have come to define my ideal form of the Internet.

[farmandbarn]

Too much confusion

Sunday, 26 August 2018

Took a bit of a hiatus there. Maybe I needed that. Was also out of state for a few days, so...

Stopped looking at weather reports. Odd, since I'm concerned about it on a day-to-day level. Maybe, I think, it's because I can't do anything about it. Might be hot or cool or rainy or cloudy-- but I still go on regardless. At least not looking at weather reports means I'm always surprised and never disappointed in predictions that never come true.

I was in St. Paul, by the way. There were some rough spots there, with the person I was visiting and our relationship. I wanted things to go better. Want isn't enough. Things, however, ended on a positive upswing. It's just... I could see us both falling into some of our old patterns-- the same models we both know don't work. I think we eventually realized and, knowledge being half the battle, were able to get through it. But any answers, any predictions, remain blurry.

In a sense, the line I quoted in my very first post still rings true: I'm right on the edge on this one. I don't know what's supposed to happen next.

On Friday, I was here:

Next, on the following day, we made the mistake of going to Mall of America. The day before, keep in mind, I was on a farm where I typically see no one for almost all of my time. I've gotten used to that. Then, suddenly, people everywhere. This massive space, it felt like it went on forever, and there was barely a space to go where people weren't moving into. It was a bit much for me. 

So, suddenly, I was here:

Though it kind of set things off in a poor direction, didn't it? I could feel myself withdrawing from the crowds, becoming quiet. A certain anxiety was in the mix. I just wanted to get the hell out of there.

On a lighter note, when I first arrived, I imagined the mall was a generational spaceship. It felt like that, I swear. This giant space, sort of turning inwards on itself, no windows-- nothing to see, after all, but empty space.

And nearly 13,000 parking spaces.

[farmandbarn]

Quiet bug on the floorboard

Wednesday, 15 August 2018

Before working on the barn, I cleaned up some items from a dead old man's trailer. The items in question were, I think, sitting in a basement for years-- the trailer itself being long gone, probably no longer in existence. It was just garbage. Some cheap utensils covered in rust or, I don't know, something. Dead light bulbs, blunt ice skates, a torn up hat, rusted pieces of an unknown machine, a ziplock bag containing Q-Tips, an empty plastic bottle...

All being saved too. Utterly bizarre. And right now I'm satisfied with that answer. Looking deeper into the roots and first causes, well, sometimes it's best to just let it go.

Think about something else: Like chokeberry pie. Had it for the first time.

Not the best photograph but it tasted alright. There were peaches too. But, yeah, nothing that amazing. I'd prefer apple or rhubarb or cherry or...

So, while at the barn, I saw a butterfly meander through the sky and gently land on a floorboard. I approached quietly and took a picture. It remained perfectly still for me. How considerate, I thought.

Later it was still there. I realized then how it had landed only to die right in front of me. It's merely a butterfly, yeah, but the moment stands out for me.

[farmandbarn]

Silence at the swimming pool

Monday, 13 August 2018

Hot today but not terrible. Some scythe work. Mostly I was in the shade but then, when I wasn't, it was not my favorite. But this guy had a pleasant time of it:

I felt glad to be the one who dug into the Earth, which was then filled by the rain, creating a little swimming pool for my friends.

My life is currently rather solitary. I don't see other people too often, usually there is no one within ear or eye-shot and beyond, and so it becomes very lovely to see little creatures all about. The cows, groundhogs, raccoons, possums, and rabbits are especially cute. Bugs don't even bother me anymore. Typically I let them go about their business instead of trying to exterminate them. A few are alright though and I take the time to hang out. This one below was surprisingly calm and friendly. Slow moving, too, which is important to me when it comes to insects.

Nonetheless, I do find myself looking forward to leaving the farm. I know this is a very unique opportunity and one I will always remember but, man, it can be rough too. I feel myself torn on the matter but I know what will happen in the future: I'll miss it.

[farmandbarn]

Chokeberry Crunch

Thursday, 9 August 2018

Yesterday was my birthday, which was surprisingly decent. Typically I dread the day. Always feel sad and not good enough. Good enough for what, you ask? No idea but the feeling remains. But yesterday was alright. The farm's been good for me.

Today, barn work and then I made screens. Well, not like I made them from scratch but still. The screen-material needed to be fitted to the frame and cut. Weird tools were used to press the mesh into the crevices, followed by something called spline. It was a whole thing.

Ok, not the most riveting material here. But, and this was the highlight of my day, while picking chokeberries I discovered a tiny birds nest tucked away and safe.

And these are called chokeberries:

I suspect the name keeps them out of the mainstream. Like it or not, names matter. It seems unfair, doesn't it? But it comes down to words and our dependence on them. A feeling, for instance, that has not been dressed with the right words will quickly fade from our memories. Tomorrow, I'll have chokepie for the very first time.

[farmandbarn]

Something I cannot name

Tuesday, 7 August 2018

Jack Arnold, the laconic father on The Wonder Years, was fond of saying: How was work? Work was work.

Though I will say, it began pouring while I was in the barn. I was surprised to realize, this is new. Don't typically head out there if it's going to rain but this was unexpected. I was working on the inside so it didn't matter much to me. Work-wise, I mean.

Otherwise, it was lovely. The rain pounding the roof and land. The wind whipping through the corn. The barn held up, too, keeping me mostly dry. Then the temperature dropped and I shivered once or twice. I held on and savored the feeling of being chilly. Feels like it's been ages. You know, I've had enough of summer for one year. Bring on the fall already. The sun can go away and come again another day.

(Not today’s storm, sure, but a recent one.)

An issue, I think, along the lines of work was work is a certain passivity. One I share, which is why I know about it. Sometimes, perhaps most often during our low points, we must only focus on getting through the day. Whatever occurs during that day is merely in passing. Goals can become fuzzy or even lost.

Which is what was on my mind: I'm not a very goal-oriented person. I more just go with the flow, as they say. Then, to set not a goal but a good goal, one must, to a certain degree, know oneself.

Easier said than done. And I think that's been a problem for me over the past few years. Don Marquis said it best: My heart has followed, all my days, something I cannot name.

[farmandbarn]

Digging again

Sunday, 5 August 2018

A needed time of rest today. I’m distrustful of those who cannot bear to do nothing. Based, I think, from my aversion to the belief that one must always be busy. There is a wince in my left eye when I come across the notion, live each day to its fullest!

Fact is, time’s not my master and today probably isn’t my last day on earth. So you know what? I’m gonna read a book for the sheer pleasure of it and then maybe I’ll play a videogame.

Or maybe I’m just really good at not giving a damn.

But I’m not sure how to put that on my resume.

Regardless, tomorrow I’ll no doubt be digging. Recently, I found this:

It’s a door latch. Or rather, it was a latch. Now it’s something else. A piece of metal, true, but it was that before as well. Now, I suppose, it’s an artifact that will sit in a brown paper lunch bag inside this old house. In twenty, forty, maybe sixty years time or more someone will find it and probably toss it in with the rest of the trash.

Though I suspect landfills make for excellent time capsules. So it all works out.

Typically, though, my finds are more like this:

Still, the question remains: What are these things now?

There are many descriptions we can tack on– even with regards to the past, present, and future. And still the thing eludes us. After a while, I even get the feeling that all these descriptions, while certainly clarifying, can also serve to further hide the thing’s true nature, whatever that may be. Assuming even that true nature is a thing.

Maybe nothing is. Or maybe all these little things group together to form something higher and more complex– yet illusory nonetheless. Which is fine by me. It seems that strain and contradiction, be it personal or societal, leads to creativity and action.

Such is the danger of the whole and the one– they lead to peace, yes, but also stagnation.

[farmandbarn]

Loss and Love

Thursday, 2 August 2018

A thankfully cool day for work. With the rain last night I spent most of my time digging on the inside of the barn rather than the outside where it would've been too muddy. Now I'm happy to be here because I know it's only temporary but, man, I get why almost all of our ancestors left the farm as soon as they were able. I say our ancestors since, until modern times, pretty much everyone lived and worked on a farm.

It just occurred to me, probably can't get a pizza delivered out here.

The lure of the city must've been strong. Especially with new opportunities. Like the factory. Hard to imagine thinking that a factory was cutting edge-- it was probably like working for Google or Apple back then.

That choice, from the perspective of today, seems grim. Long, back-breaking hours on the farm or long, back-breaking hours in the city. But for them, the ones in the past, it must've been exciting.

Things change, I guess. Much like this river I recently saw, which was, I'm sure, once very different looking.

Except for the few things that don't change. Or rather, can't. Certain literary figures, for instance. I say can't because, well, a change would destroy something vital inside us. It would sever a tie leading us back to ourselves, back to what it is to be human.

As Herbert Mason wrote, regarding his verse narrative translation of our oldest (surviving) story, the Gilgamesh:

Probably there was a Gilgamesh and he was endowed by tradition with a superhuman mind and spirit. Perhaps if we were to doubt the reality of Gilgamesh because of the folkloric hyperbole about him and his emotions as drawn in the epic, we would have to doubt whatever it is in ourselves that identifies with him-- or, for that matter, with the Biblical Job or the Shakespearean King Lear. Looked at in this light, the Gilgamesh has survived in our world because a constellation of our emotions is reflected in it. We could almost say that anything so profoundly human as the image of Gilgamesh was bound to reappear, yet we are still surprised to learn that one of the very oldest stories of man is so inherently contemporary.

The story of Gilgamesh is, by the way, a story of loss and grief. Things that never change. Personally, I have read and reread the story many times, but it was during the experience of pain and grief and loss that this story spoke the loudest. Across the centuries, across thousands of years, his voice still reaches us.

Gilgamesh sat hushed as his friend's eyes stilled. In his silence he reached out To touch the friend whom he had lost.

Though it is not only the sad things that are forever. There is, after all, Westley and Buttercup:

To doubt them, would be to doubt life itself. It would be a suicide of sorts.

[farmandbarn]

Alone at night

Wednesday, 1 August 2018

Stopped work yesterday to watch a possum eat and eat. Till he was full. He picked up a vegetable with his paws and ate it like it was corn on the cob. It's very human-like, the way they and other such animals use their paws. He didn't just find the food and eat it, too, but would pick it up and carry it to a better location a few feet away. They have a funny gait, don't they? A kind of lumbering. I think you see it in bears too. It's not graceful but it's cute, which is probably better anyhow.

He came out at dusk, as is their way. I've been going out at night myself. Mainly for the stars. It's a very pleasant time for me to walk around. The sounds are different, coyotes often howl and the occasional moo from a distant cow strikes an eerie note. Sometimes a mist descends on the field. Thick too. I like to imagine frightful things emerging from it. The scariest thing I've thought of, coming out of there in the darkness?: A man in a fine and spotless suit, hair perfect and slicked back, and a big, big smile.

I'd like to venture out to the barn at midnight or so. Typically about fifteen minutes for the walk. During the day, I already feel completely alone out there and so I imagine the feeling must increase in the night. Especially this time of year, with the corn growing so high, it can feel like I'm in the center of a maze-- alone and unseen.

The barn might be a little spooky at night but I'd enjoy the even greater sense of solitude. It's a feeling I've been trying to more fully grasp out here. I've never lived in a rural environment before and the thought of truly being alone is still novel. I get the feeling, from time to time, that I am being watched. Not in a malevolent way, mind, but more like on The Truman Show. It's weird and I don't like it.

[farmandbarn]

Smiles and Magic

Sunday, 29 July 2018

No work today but went on a most irritating hike in a forest. Mosquitos and mosquitos and mosquitos. Following behind me in a cloud. That terrible high-pitched buzz as one would come too near my ear. The air began to feel more and more humid but I wonder if it truly did or if it was purely in my mind.

The area was probably a forest once, a hundred or two hundred years ago, then it became farmland, and now, a forest once more. Young. Perhaps fifty years or so. I'm only guessing at the times of course. A structure appeared upon a hill--  once used as a place of rest and prayer. It's boarded up now. Very small, as you can see below. I don't think it was ever anything official, just something for farmers to take a respite in. Apparently, that sort of thing was once popular in Germany and so the idea naturally spread to parts of America alongside the German immigrants.

Now an odd building lost in the woods.

Though to be lost, or on a dead-end path, is not necessarily a bad thing. A clearing may be stumbled into, hidden things revealed.

If you have never spent whole afternoons with burning ears and rumpled hair, forgetting the world around you over a book, forgetting cold and hunger--

If you have never read secretly under the bedclothes with a flashlight, because your father or mother or some other well-meaning person has switched off the lamp on the plausible ground that it was time to sleep because you had to get up so early--

If you have never wept bitter tears because a wonderful story has come to an end and you must take your leave of the characters with whom you have shared so many adventures, whom you have loved and admired, for whom you have hoped and feared, and without whose company life seems empty and meaningless--

If such things have not been part of your experience, you probably won't understand what Bastian did next.

From Michael Ende's The Neverending Story (translated by Ralph Manheim).

From lost people, like the fictitious Bastion, come wonder and magic and smiles.

[farmandbarn]

Dig Dug

Saturday, 28 July 2018

Cooler weather and cloudy skies have prevailed for the past week or so. Grateful for that. As I dig deeper around the barn's foundation, there are fewer things to find. Today, an old nail or two. Mainly pieces of mortar broken away decades ago. I save that too.

Slowly, so very slowly, exposing the foundation.

I am not the kind of person I want to be. From Frank Herbert's Dune series. Been rattling about in my mind for a bit now. The words are true but I don't know where to begin or end.

What is the good life? Don’t look at me.

Been considering what changes in my life would lead me to become a better person. Then, what is a better person? Don't know. Maybe I should try to do some volunteer work? And I don't mean by way of the massive structures that organize that sort of thing but rather, just on my own. I know of a nursing home-- maybe I could hang out there and listen to whatever the old people have to say.

(I'll add, albeit parenthetically, about my curious phrasing "of the massive structures..." Not too long ago I went to a volunteer website to see if I could be of any use, I mean, I figured I could just turn up and serve soup or something. But it was this whole process. It was like applying for a job that was way beyond my experience and skill level. About halfway through this massive application, I gave up.)

So maybe I'll see about doing that, the on my own bit.

While digging, I recalled some guy talking about justice and then old Socrates showing up. Whoa, slow down, cowboy. What's justice? Then the guy didn't even know what justice was. Nobody did and nobody does.

What I was thinking was that justice seems to be more of a feeling than, say, a strict definition or something quantifiable. Now when I say feeling here I don't mean emotion.

I think it has everything to do with culture and customs. We read and listen to stories. We learn about history. Again, we listen. We take it all in. From that matrix-- that womb-- we get a feeling about who we are as a whole and what we value. Which is why we can get a feeling that something is unjust even if we lack a formal definition.

When everything is in its right place, there comes a certain satisfaction. And maybe that is justice but still, we are the ones to judge what right place means.

It comes to mind that this is why the core curriculum in universities is of the utmost importance. Even though it often annoys the undergrads, I sure hope it’s doing well.

[farmandbarn]

Butchery

Thursday, 26 June 2018

Feel exhausted after long hours again at the barn. Though it was a cool and breezy day. It still feels weird when I touch my hands and they feel so rough.

Took some photos as I walked around a new city last weekend. Below is of a butcher shop. As a child, my mom would often go to a local butcher, where, oddly, comic books were also sold. A big part of my childhood. Riding my bike there to see if the new issue of Superman had been released. (After the whole Death of Superman thing, I really got into it.) I realize now how it was very high-quality butchery. Sadly, we stopped going there when my grade school got this thing called Market Day. We got our meats and many other food items through them. Even as a kid, I could easily tell that it was extremely low-quality food. I think my mom felt the need to support the school and all. It was around that time when I began to loathe dinner.

Thank god for junk food.

Later, that local butcher shop closed its doors forever. I think there's a dry cleaner there now but I'm not positive.

So I'm always happy to see a proper butcher shop even though I've become increasingly not ok with eating meat. I'm not a vegetarian but maybe someday I'll take the plunge.

For instance, around here there are cows that still live outside with lots of room but there are many who spend their entire lives inside small open-air structures. They're packed in there too. Slots on the floor take care of defecation. Food troughs line the sides. They can't move around much. The smell is often terrible. The slots on the ground and limited movement hurt the leg joints on many of them. Their whole lives, stuck in a very small space.

I don't like being part of all this. But I am. I ate a steak last night, you know, and it tasted great.